This is from the UK.... it has got to be one of the strangest RL media articles I've read... are there any worse out there?
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/rugbyleague/comment/0,10070,1582540,00.html
If league ruled the world
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Barney Ronay
Saturday October 1, 2005
The Guardian[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The words "rugby league" tend to conjure up a kind of mental flip-chart: prodigious thighs; terrible, punishing fitness regimes; men in tight shorts doing that compulsive neck-pumping manoeuvre while having their faces ground into heavy mud. You know the kind of thing. Being an effete southern rugby league fan tends to put you on the outside of all this. It's like having a big friendly northern cousin who's a great laugh at Christmas but who just wishes you'd remember to call now and then - if you can tear yourself away from your insalate rucola con spaglie di parmegiano of course.
That's the other thing about rugby league, the sense of thwarted ambition. As a sport it feels unjustly overlooked, unaccountably snubbed. Watch today's Super League semi-final and you'll probably notice it. Rugby league wants a little recognition around here.
So what if rugby league were to get its way? What if history had, in the distant past, lurched off on an unscripted rugby league tangent? At which point the screen slowly dissolves, wind chimes are heard, smoke clears and we find ourselves in an alternate universe, one where rugby league is indeed king.
Not that anything seems that different at first. It's Friday afternoon and you're still at work, at your job on one of the country's four dedicated rugby league newspapers. Kevin from the Middle East rugby league desk drops by. Like you he's wearing replica rugby league shoulder pads over a brand new Catford Broncos' away strip. "Fancy dropping by the Ellery Hanley?" he says, casually practising his play-the-ball technique against your hat stand.
Outside some kids are playing a scratch game of rugby league in the street, enjoying the feeling of cracking each other's heads on the Tarmac, scrambling after the zigzagging ball and occasionally trooping off to the sin bin after a 10-man pile-on. In the pub a group of Japanese teenagers, hair teased into fashionable antipodean semi-mullets, are perusing a copy of Dazed and Confused featuring the recently crowned No1, post-modern style icon, Leeds' prop Barrie McDermott. At the bar you glimpse a newspaper with pictures of another rugby league-themed garden party at Downing Street. There's the Prime Minister being trampled into the lawn by the Great Britain loose forward Kevin Sinfield and a tuxedoed French ambassador. The big show-off.
Back home you get yourself a squashy plastic canister of Lucozade Sport and turn on the TV. It's the usual rubbish: highlights of La Rugby Liga from Spain. A documentary on Los Angeles gangs: teenagers prowling the city's ghetto courts in their gang "colours" (Leeds Blue or Wigan Red). And on Five an erotic rugby league thriller called There Goes The Hooter. Thinking better of it you take the phone off its kicking tee, curl up on your Andrew Johns duvet and fall asleep counting successful 40-20 kicks. There are obvious obstacles to this quest for world dominance. For a start rugby league has no tactics to speak of. Give or take the odd grubber kick, the whole thing is simply a matter of running forwards (running sideways or backwards - they just won't quite do it) as fast as you can. But still you never know. Stranger things have happened. Football, for example.[/font]
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/rugbyleague/comment/0,10070,1582540,00.html
If league ruled the world
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Barney Ronay
Saturday October 1, 2005
The Guardian[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The words "rugby league" tend to conjure up a kind of mental flip-chart: prodigious thighs; terrible, punishing fitness regimes; men in tight shorts doing that compulsive neck-pumping manoeuvre while having their faces ground into heavy mud. You know the kind of thing. Being an effete southern rugby league fan tends to put you on the outside of all this. It's like having a big friendly northern cousin who's a great laugh at Christmas but who just wishes you'd remember to call now and then - if you can tear yourself away from your insalate rucola con spaglie di parmegiano of course.
That's the other thing about rugby league, the sense of thwarted ambition. As a sport it feels unjustly overlooked, unaccountably snubbed. Watch today's Super League semi-final and you'll probably notice it. Rugby league wants a little recognition around here.
So what if rugby league were to get its way? What if history had, in the distant past, lurched off on an unscripted rugby league tangent? At which point the screen slowly dissolves, wind chimes are heard, smoke clears and we find ourselves in an alternate universe, one where rugby league is indeed king.
Not that anything seems that different at first. It's Friday afternoon and you're still at work, at your job on one of the country's four dedicated rugby league newspapers. Kevin from the Middle East rugby league desk drops by. Like you he's wearing replica rugby league shoulder pads over a brand new Catford Broncos' away strip. "Fancy dropping by the Ellery Hanley?" he says, casually practising his play-the-ball technique against your hat stand.
Outside some kids are playing a scratch game of rugby league in the street, enjoying the feeling of cracking each other's heads on the Tarmac, scrambling after the zigzagging ball and occasionally trooping off to the sin bin after a 10-man pile-on. In the pub a group of Japanese teenagers, hair teased into fashionable antipodean semi-mullets, are perusing a copy of Dazed and Confused featuring the recently crowned No1, post-modern style icon, Leeds' prop Barrie McDermott. At the bar you glimpse a newspaper with pictures of another rugby league-themed garden party at Downing Street. There's the Prime Minister being trampled into the lawn by the Great Britain loose forward Kevin Sinfield and a tuxedoed French ambassador. The big show-off.
Back home you get yourself a squashy plastic canister of Lucozade Sport and turn on the TV. It's the usual rubbish: highlights of La Rugby Liga from Spain. A documentary on Los Angeles gangs: teenagers prowling the city's ghetto courts in their gang "colours" (Leeds Blue or Wigan Red). And on Five an erotic rugby league thriller called There Goes The Hooter. Thinking better of it you take the phone off its kicking tee, curl up on your Andrew Johns duvet and fall asleep counting successful 40-20 kicks. There are obvious obstacles to this quest for world dominance. For a start rugby league has no tactics to speak of. Give or take the odd grubber kick, the whole thing is simply a matter of running forwards (running sideways or backwards - they just won't quite do it) as fast as you can. But still you never know. Stranger things have happened. Football, for example.[/font]
